


Safety Measures

by lauraschiller



Category: Uglies Series - Scott Westerfeld
Genre: Coming of Age, Cutting, Diego War, Dystopia, Eating Disorders, F/M, Frenemies, Friends to Lovers, Loyalty, Medical Experimentation, Redemption, Spoilers: Specials, hoverboarding, informed consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28618842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lauraschiller/pseuds/lauraschiller
Summary: Four times Fausto followed Shay's lead, and one time it was the other way around. This story has been cross-posted to FF.net.
Relationships: Shay & Tally Youngblood, Shay/David, Shay/Fausto, Tally Youngblood/Zane
Kudos: 2





	Safety Measures

1.  
Fausto is hoverboarding along the slalom poles in Cleopatra Park when he sees a girl watching him. She’s floating cross-legged on her own board about a meter off the ground, skinny as a wildcat and just as intense. He knows her by sight, since she lives in his dorm, but she belongs to such a tight, mysterious group of friends that no one knows much about her. Especially not Fausto, who’s better with machinery than people.

He’s so unused to being looked at – especially by girls – that he almost falls off his board. Instead he comes to a wobbly stop in front of her, arms windmilling, and she laughs.

For an ugly, she’s the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. He doesn’t even care if she’s laughing at him, as long as he gets to listen to the sound.

“Hey, how’d you do that?” she asks. “How do you make it go so fast?”

“I, um … ” He blushes, guilty and proud in equal measure, as he jumps down from his board. “I kind of tricked the safety governor. It’s not that hard, actually. I’m doing industrial design in school, and they showed us how the boards work on the inside, so … ”

He stops himself from rambling on about electronics just in time. Nerdiness, he’s been told, is one of his least attractive qualities, and yet another thing the operation will soon fix, along with his bad skin, huge feet and bushy eyebrows.

“Cool.” She grins. “Can you show me?”  
“Really?” For a moment, he’s so dazzled by her smile – her soft lips and bright hazel eyes couldn’t possibly be improved by any operation – that he almost opens up the panel on her board right there. Until, of course, his sense of responsibility kicks in. “You have to be really good, though. Otherwise, with the safety off, it’d be way too easy to crash.”

“Oh yeah?” Her grin only widens. “Stand back, Eyebrows. Watch and learn.”

She goes from sitting to standing in one smooth move and rockets away, the air displacement ruffling Fausto’s hair. She takes the slalom poles as fast as her standard-issue board will allow, ignoring the automated voice warning her to slow down. Her balance is rock-solid. Her turns are not as precise as his, but that only makes her flying more impressive. He uses his board like a physics student; she uses hers like it’s a part of her body. Her pigtails stream behind her like black silk ribbons, and her laugh echoes on the wind.

When she comes back, Fausto is speechless.

“Good enough for you?” she asks. “Does this mean you’re gonna fix my board?”

He nods.

“Awesome. Come and meet my friends.”

“Um … seriously?” he asks. 

“Sure. We’re always looking for new tricks to play. They’ll like you, I promise.” She takes his hand (she’s actually holding his hand) and pulls him along, their boards hovering along behind them. 

Unable to believe his luck, he follows.

“What’s your name, by the way?”

“Fausto.”

“Nice to meet you, Fausto. I’m Shay.”

/

2.  
“I’m not going,” says Shay. “I can’t. I _won’t._ ”

They’re already prepared – dressed in black, carrying stolen ranger kits, portable heaters tucked into their dorm beds to trick the sensors, interface rings left behind, hiding in the bushes to wait for Zane and the others – and yet, Shay is glowering at Fausto as if he were holding her at gunpoint, like in the old Rusty movies.

“I … I don’t … what do you mean?” he stutters. “I thought you wanted to go.”

“I thought so too,” she hisses, and he slowly recognizes her anger as frustration with herself. “I just … what if I can’t fit in at the Smoke? What if I’m not strong enough? David knows so much, he’s lived all his life in the wild … what if I’m just a stupid city girl to him?”

Fausto likes and respects David, from the few times they’ve met in the Rusty Ruins, but he’s also thoroughly sick of hearing Shay talk about him. She practically worships the older boy, and it’s painful to watch, especially since Fausto suspects that David doesn’t feel the same. Then again, as quiet as the rebel leader is, who can tell?

“Uh, you do realize it’s dangerous in the wild, right? I don’t think fitting in should be your first priority.”

She punches him on the arm. “Not. Helping.”

“Ow!”

“But you’re right.” Her eyes glitter with worry in the light of a passing maintenance drone. “We could die out there.”

Fausto hesitates. The boy she thinks he is – hacker, rebel, partner in crime – would probably encourage her to leave, but the trouble is, he can’t always be that boy. Sometimes all he wants is to be safe, and to keep her safe. 

(Besides, the selfish part of him adds, if she stays, maybe David will lose interest.)

“Well, if you’re not going,” he says, in a voice that sounds steadier than he feels, “I’m not going. It wouldn’t be worth it without you.”

“W-what?” Shay squeaks. Her hand flies to cover her mouth. He’s never been the best at reading other people’s emotions, but embarrassment is an easy one to spot. He’s never felt uglier in his life.

“I mean, you’re my friend,” he hurriedly adds, clapping her on the shoulder in a very unromantic way. “It just wouldn’t be as fun.”

She brushes his hand away, but she does it gently, and her voice is subdued when she replies: “You know what this means, don’t you? It means you’ll turn pretty in three weeks, and I’ll be alone.”

“I’ll ping you.”

She scoffs. “That’s what they all say.” 

“Well, in my case, believe it.”

She meets his eyes for a long moment in the cool, pine-scented night air. “If there’s anyone I believe would do that,” she says, “It’s you.”

/

3.  
Fausto stares up at the Valentino Mansion transmission tower in disbelief. He hasn’t even climbed it yet, and already his head is spinning. 

“Remind me again why we’re doing this.”

“To get bubbly, why else?” Shay’s body is softer since the operation, her hair straighter and glossier, but her smile is as dangerous as ever. The snake flash tattoos on her forehead writhe in time to her heartbeat. “If Tally and Zane can do it, so can we.”

“As far as I can tell, Tally and Zane got bubbly by kissing.” Whoops. Open mouth, insert foot. He’s gotten even worse at the whole talking thing since he turned pretty, but at least the embarrassment is gone. 

“I don’t think so.” Shay shakes her head, copper streaks of hair blazing in the sunset. “It can’t be that easy, or every new pretty in town would be like them.”

“Shouldn’t we at least have bungee jackets or something? So we don’t … you know … splat?”

She hesitates, the snake tattoo speeding up in time with her fear, but then her face hardens. “You go ahead, but I won’t. I want the risk to be real.”

Fausto, who considers the risk real enough already, takes one of the spare bungee jackets they keep on rooftops for emergencies and straps it on. “You go first, okay? That way, I can catch you if you fall.”

“Thanks, Fausto-la. I’m glad you’re here.” 

She kisses him on the cheek. Pretties are often more affectionate than uglies; it doesn’t mean much. Still, his own flash tattoo (two cogwheels on the left side of his forehead) must be spinning madly as his heartbeat thumps in his ears.

Even with a bungee jacket, the climb is dizzying. He can’t decide which is more so: the city stretching below him, rings of green and silver under a flaming orange sunset, or Shay’s gold-and-copper eyes lit up in awe. The pretty haze he’s been living under falls away, replaced by a glittering clarity. For the first time in months, he feels like his old self again – except that this time, there’s no one else in the world he’d rather be. So this is what Zane meant by getting bubbly.

In that moment, Shay cries out.

When Fausto looks up, she’s clinging to the tower with one arm and both legs, staring down at one of her hands. Blood drips from between her fingers. She’s turning pale and her eyes are wide with horror.

“Are you okay?” he calls.

“The Smoke,” she gasps. “I remember … ”

“Remember what?”

“I need to get down. Right now!” 

He’s never heard a pretty raise her voice like this, or look like this. It’s terrifying – not because she’s a pretty, but because she’s Shay.

“Okay, okay,” he says, changing direction as fast as he can.

Climbing down is a whole different challenge from climbing up, especially when he can hear Shay’s ragged breaths overhead as she’s forced to use her injured hand to climb. She’s going to need medspray. Please let there be medspray in his backpack.

At the end he does catch her, even if her fall is less than a meter, and she leaves a streak of blood on his bungee jacket. He can feel her shaking as he sets her on her feet, or maybe they both are. It’s hard to tell.

“It was Tally,” she whispers. “She called the Specials.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I lied about my life in the Smoke. I didn’t hate it, not really.” Her voice cracks with tears as she looks down at her bleeding palm. “I worked so hard, I had blisters all over my hands, but for once, my life meant something. I was hungry for my food and I could sleep at night. David loved me, or at least I thought he did. I was happy … ” Fausto remembers her as an ugly, how skinny she used to be, and how these days she seems to survive on coffee and adrenaline even more than the rest of the Crims. The implications are heartbreaking. “ … Until Tally betrayed us all.”

Fausto’s first thought is that there must be some misunderstanding. Tally’s loyal to a fault. She’s been best friends with Peris since they were littlies, and committed to Zane since the moment she met him. This sort of betrayal doesn’t sound like her at all. 

Shay, however, looks far from reasonable at the moment. She squeezes her cut hand into a fist and opens it again, letting the blood run down her arm and drip onto the concrete, like a pre-Rusty swearing an oath. Fausto never knew it was possible to feel so sorry for someone and so scared of her at the same time.

“Shay-la, you … you need help.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get it. Somehow.”

/

4.  
“Hey, Fausto-la! Didn’t I tell you I’d get help?”

This is not the kind of help he had in mind.

The Rusty Ruins whip by in a steel-and-concrete blur as he pushes his tricked-out hoverboard as far as it can go. He’s gotten badly out of practice since his ugly days, but he needs to make the chase convincing. Besides, his instincts are screaming at him to go faster anyway. Three agents of Special Circumstances are on his tail … and one of them is Shay.

With her black eyes, pointed teeth and silver uniform, she reminds him of a shark. Even her grin looks like she’s scenting blood. The most frightening thing about her, though, is the scars on her arms.

“What did Dr. Cable do to you?”

“She cured me of being a bubblehead, that’s what. I see so much clearer now. If you stop running, we can do the same for you.”

“Are you going to stop if I say no?”

Shay laughs mockingly as Fausto takes a hard turn, narrowly missing the corner of a building. “I have to say, I’m surprised you got this far after you chickened out last time. What happened to ‘It’s not worth it without you’?”

Her imitation of his voice is unnecessarily cruel, but he’s got no time to feel embarrassed. The lights on his board are yellow, the charge running low. It’s almost nighttime. If she’s going to catch him, she’ll have to do it soon.

“I pinged you,” he says. “You didn’t answer. I – we were always gonna come back for you.”

“That’s what they all say.” She scoffs. “Well, not this time. We Cutters don’t leave anyone behind. Do we, boys?”

Two brusque male voices answer in the negative. Risking a look over his shoulder in flight, Fausto recognizes the other agents for the first time.

Tachs and Ho. Former Crims. Former _friends_. And they both wear their uniforms with the sleeves cut off like Shay does, showing off rows of scars. 

What Fausto does next is one of the hardest things he’s ever had to do in his life, but he does it. Maddy already has his signature. She’s somewhere out here with Tally, Zane and David, packing up, getting ready to run. He doesn’t know where, or how they’ll find him; he just has to have faith. Faith that whatever Dr. Cable does to her agents can be cured … as long as Maddy has a test subject to work on.

Fausto’s parents named him after a Rusty myth about a scientist who made a deal with the devil for knowledge. They just liked the way it sounded, but he knows now how the scientist must have felt.

_I, Fausto Verdi, hereby give my informed consent._

He steps down from his board and turns to face his pursuers, hands up. 

“All right, guys, you got me. Whatever you’re going to do, just make it quick.”

/

1.  
They find each other in Diego, at one of the welcome parties the city regularly throws for immigrants. Fausto hears Shay before he sees her. Through their skintennas, her breath sounds in his ears as if she were right beside him, even from the opposite side of a crowded park.

Still, he’s not prepared for the way her face lights up with pure, unguarded happiness when she sees him. He hadn’t known she was still capable of that.

“Fausto-la! You’re okay!” 

She launches herself into his arms with superhuman speed and strength, so he has to spin her around like a human pair of crash bracelets. She smells like the forest, like helicopter steel, like every challenge she’s survived to get here. She’s never been more beautiful to him, but he can’t afford to lose focus. If ever he’s needed to stay icy for the task ahead, it’s now.

“Of course I’m okay, Boss. What did you think?”

“What was I supposed to think? The Smokies kidnapped you right in front of me!” Her joy swings over into anger with unnatural speed. “For all I knew, they could’ve turned your brain to mush like they did with Zane. If they were experimenting on you - ”

“They did, though,” Fausto says, bracing himself for her reaction. “I’m not special anymore.”

This is the moment he’s been waiting for, along with Maddy and Peris and all their fellow rebels. He can see them among the party guests right now – Peris by the punch bowl, Croy, Ryde and Astrix dancing to the music, Maddy talking to a group of older people who might be parents – all of them keeping a watchful eye on him in case the situation gets out of control. They wanted to inject Shay right away, even without consent, but Fausto begged them for a chance to talk to her first. 

_I know her,_ he said. _Please trust me._

 _I hope you’re right,_ said a skeptical Maddy.

More than anything, he hopes so too.

Shay meets his eyes with dawning comprehension, followed by horror. Her lip curls and she shoves him away, as if his hands suddenly disgust her.

“What did they do to you?” she sneers. 

“Maddy found a way to reverse Dr. Cable’s brain surge, and I volunteered.” He smiles wryly. “It took a few days to sink in.”

“They made you … weak.”

“Being less violent doesn’t make me any less strong.” 

He can smell her rising anger, see her eyes flicker from side to side as she counts all the randoms – the people, he corrects himself – surrounding them. He knows she wants a fight, that only the threat of being arrested by Diego’s wardens keeps her from knocking him out cold. 

“I’m doing this for you, Shay,” he says softly, without looking away from her furious black eyes. “You don’t have to always be angry anymore. Please let me help you.”

He pulls the injector filled with Maddy’s cure out of his coat pocket and holds it out to her.

She slaps it out of his hand, making it fall into the grass. He stoops to pick it up, and she scoffs.

“The day I stop being angry is the day I end the New Smoke once and for all. If you won’t help me, you’d better get out of my way.”

She whirls around, pigtails flying, and walks away from him, heading for the slidewalk at the edge of the park. 

The New Smoke? Fausto shakes his head to clear it of confusion. She doesn’t know yet. How can she not know? Of course, she’s been traveling through the wild alone for weeks. Whatever clues have led her to Diego, she can’t have pieced the whole picture together yet. 

Which means he needs to tell her, and should have told her the moment they met. This is so much bigger than their personal problems now. 

“Shay, wait!” He runs after her, jumping onto the slidewalk. “Hold on!”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

“You want to end the New Smoke?” He keeps his voice low, so the other pedestrians won’t overhear, but he knows her skintenna is picking up every word. “You’ll have to kill a million people. Diego is the New Smoke, and Dr. Cable’s already got an armada of hovercraft coming to destroy it.”

For once in the three years they’ve known each other, it’s Shay’s turn to be speechless. 

The slidewalk carries them away from the park and into what must be Diego’s New Pretty Town, although the divisions don’t seem to exist anymore. Screens are everywhere – handheld devices, the walls of buildings, even surgically embedded in people’s bodies – and some of the biggest ones seem to be dedicated to political news. As Fausto and Shay look up at the flickering skyscrapers above them, several images stand out for them with icy clarity. He catches her arm and whisks her off the slidewalk, so they can stand in front of the screen and watch more closely:

The skyline of their home city.

Dr. Cable looking cool and confident in the center seat of the council chamber.

The smoking crater where the Armory used to be.

From the subtitles scrolling beneath the images, it’s all too easy to see what’s going on, and besides, Fausto has seen this story before. He watches Shay with bated breath. Everything depends on her reaction now. If this can’t get through to her, he has no idea what will.

“The Armory … ” Her eyes widen. “But Diego didn’t do that. Tally and I did.”

“You … wait, what?”

“She wouldn’t stop whining about shaky-boy Zane. We had to break into the Armory to get a tool that would cut through his interface necklace … why are you looking at me like that?”

“Because Zane is our friend too, and he’s in the hospital. When that armada gets here, where do you think they’ll strike first?”

Fausto sweeps his hand toward the tightly packed public buildings around them, and he knows that, since Dr. Cable trained them both, Shay will see it through the same military perspective as he does. Whoever built Diego’s town hall next to its hospital made a tactical error, and if they don’t do something, Zane will pay the price along with all the other most vulnerable people in Diego.

Shay’s hand darts out to grab Fausto’s sleeve. He can feel her shaking. For a moment, it almost feels like they’ve climbed the transmission tower again, with their entire lives reeling around them and rearranging into new shapes. 

He was right. She does still have empathy, after all – and it’s hurting her.

“It wasn’t supposed to go this far,” she gasps. “Nothing’s worth starting a war over, not even … Fausto, what the hell is wrong with me?”

“Nothing we can’t fix, Shay. I promise.”

He takes out the injector once again. She struggles visibly, disgust and anger flickering in her eyes, but the emotion that wins out is a quiet resolve. She holds out her bare wrist, scars and all, and closes her eyes. 

The injector hisses as the liquid reaches her veins. She squeezes her eyes shut. He’s seen her cut deeper into herself than this – he’s done the same, they were Cutters after all – but that wild-eyed look of rapture doesn’t come this time, only sadness. 

“Is that why you came after me?” she asks – not accusingly this time, but sadly. “To warn me about what I did? To … fix me?”

“I had a lot of reasons for coming after you.” He’s still holding her hand, and she’s not pulling away. “You must know by now, don’t you? You’re better at sensing people’s feelings than anyone else.”

“You’re in love with me.” She looks down at their hands, the scars on both their wrists, the calluses from hand-to-hand combat. “Yeah, I know that. I’ve known that since we were uglies. What I don’t know is why.”

“Why not?”

“How can you?” Trust Shay to get angry even at a moment like this, but he’s no longer afraid of her. “You’re such a good man, you always have been. Even as a Cutter, you were always taking care of the rest of us. I called Tally selfish, but I’ve been the selfish one all along. How can I ever be good enough for you, after what I did to you? To everyone?”

“Because I never feel more alive than when I’m with you. Ugly, pretty, special, it doesn’t matter – you’re always just Shay to me.”

Her black eyes fly open. He’s seen them in three different colors and myriad expression now, but he’s never seen them like this: shining like polished obsidian with the brightness of tears.

“What the … ?” She laughs, not the dry bark she picked up from Dr. Cable, but the kind of laugh that comes with crying. “I didn’t know Specials could cry. Is this the cure already?”

“The cure takes three days to work. This is all you. Now, please tell me whether those are happy tears or ... ”

Before he can finish the sentence, she grabs him by the lapels of his coat and kisses him, regardless of the flickering wallscreen or the people moving past. To his enhanced senses, nothing has ever felt as soft as her mouth, as silky as her hair, or as strong and gentle as her hands. 

It’s not an icy feeling. It’s better than that.

It’s warm.

“Now come on,” he says, when they come up for air. “We need to cure the rest of the Cutters. With all sixteen of us, there’s got to be a way we can stop this war.”

“You’re right,” she says. “Also, we need to find Tally. She and I have a lot to make up for.”

“Back to the party?” he suggests. “Maddy’s there, with Croy and the others. They can help us.”

Shay’s face hardens with dislike, but she knows as well as he does that ending the war is more important than old grudges. “Fine,” she says.

He does a running jump onto the far side of the slidewalk, the one going in the opposite direction. (Being special isn’t all bad, after all.) 

Smiling at his exuberance, she follows.


End file.
